Port-au-Prince – Raymond Chouinard bobs and weaves through this capital’s streets in his Mitsubishi four-by-four, a 9-millimetre Glock tucked in his pants, cursing like a vrai Québécois at the United Nations tanks that choke the city’s arteries.

“Why don’t they put the $5- or $6 million that this is costing on the street instead?” says Chouinard, one of 16 children born to Rachel Chouinard, some 57 years ago in Matane. “And by the time they decide to put that money on the street, it will be too late.”

Since the earthquake shook this nation to its knees Jan. 12, Chouinard, who came here 15 years ago to start a scrap-metal and heavy machinery business, has worked tirelessly to clear roads, search for bodies and try to figure out how to bring down teetering buildings without adding to the hundreds of thousands of people already crushed under the rubble.

The entire city, once housing about 8 million people, will have to be razed, Chouinard says. He estimates that 53 million cubic metres of concrete and debris will have to be removed – to the port, the outskirts of town, wherever there is room, and the process will take two years. Then rebuilding can begin – it is hoped – this time according to some kind of building code, where up until now none has existed.

“The National Palace, a 160-year-old jewel, will have to come down,” Chouinard says, manoeuvering the vehicle through streets jammed with pedestrians, motorcycles and cars. “The courts, the ministries, the banks, the schools the hospitals, everything, everything, everything will have to come down.”

In the meantime, a traumatized population survives on the street, scavenging whatever they can from the apocalyptic scene around them to fashion some kind of shelter for their surviving loved ones. People dig through the rubble of what was once a grocery store to grab what they can, a crowd gathers around two men involved in a violent tug-of-war over a bag of rice. There have been no official camps set up by Red Cross; instead, the Haitians themselves have taken refuge in soccer fields, school yards, parks, setting up their own bathing areas and open-air toilets, ad hoc medical “clinics” which are no more than a couple of chairs under a tree and a Haitian doctor or nurse with no supplies.

“Why haven’t aid agencies brought tents?” Chouinard rages, his hand leaning on the horn. “They’ll spend $3 or $4 million to do studies first to see if the people are hungry or if they need shelter. It’s obvious they are starving, so put that money directly on the street.”

A convoy of UN tanks and trucks races by in the opposite direction, armed soldiers perched at the ready, sirens blaring. A crowd begins running ahead of the white monsters, scurrying off the road in the direction of the leaning or crumbling structures.

“UN bastards!” he yells, winding down his window. “Why do they have marines with machine-guns like that, as if they’re in Afghanistan or Iraq? It’s ridiculous!”

One of six cellphones rings and he answers. Tears fill his eyes.

“Your daughter is dead?” he says, letting out a deep sigh. “Oh no, I’m on my way, I’m not far.”

Besides cleaning up the aftermath of an earthquake that destroyed Haiti in less than a minute, Chouinard has had to deal with his own grief – he has lost nine close friends, plus staff. A 13-year-old girl, whose parents christened her with Chouinard’s surname as her first name, died in school, while her 9-year-old sister escaped.

He’s also trying to comfort staff who are in deep mourning, yet show up for work, perhaps to distract themselves from the horrors around them.

One of his best employees, Charles (Chouinard, blank from fatigue, can’t recall his last name), who changes and repairs tires, lost his three children, wife and parents.

“He came back to work on Sunday and I said, ‘Charles, stay home for a week’ and gave him $125 U.S. and told him to go bury his dead and to take it easy,” says Chouinard, a father of a 20-year-old daughter who is in Cegep in Montreal. “He is a really good man, a good worker, the best I have. But I have lots of workers who lost a mother, a brother, wife, children. It’s incredible.”

There are lots of backhoes, front-end loaders, dump trucks and bulldozers in the walled, armed fortress of Vorbe et Fils (VNF) Construction, a Haitian firm for which Chouinard, along with his own companies, is in charge of heavy machinery. But the machines sit idle because of a lack of fuel and parts, arrival of which is anxiously awaited from Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere.

Chouinard and his team did what they could in the immediate aftermath of the quake, pitching in to remove the unrecognizable corpses from the ruins, transport them by dump truck to dispose of them. They cleared roads. And they brought down the remains of what buildings they could, but now they need fuel.

Chouinard is madly trying to find a hunk of cast iron to make a wrecking ball that can smash down walls perched over roads, threatening to fall with the next aftershock. He stops at a bank, once five storeys high, and now reduced to four, crushing about 37 employees inside. Fito Léger, an engineer with VNF Construction, stands at his side as they discuss how to raze the cracked, teetering structure.

After a long, hot day filled with infuriating traffic, a slow Net connection, red tape and a communications breakdown, Chouinard suddenly jerks the steering wheel sharply to the left, barely missing a pedestrian and slams on the brakes.

“Do you feel like a real beer? A really cold beer?” he asks, tempting a journalist who hasn’t had much water in days.

Samy Complexe, the sign says, is a beauty salon, barber shop, prêt-a-porter bar and grill. It’s a surreal scene amid the catastrophic background, but a testament to Haitians’ ability to smile and laugh and get on with life, even though their world has crumbled around them.

“Four beer!” Chouinard yells to the waitress. His is obviously a recognizable face in the ’hood.

A few Haitians sit at tables outside – no one dares to go inside any building here – on a small terrasse, eating grilled chicken, pasta and manioc. Konpa music blares from a man’s cellphone and the large Haitian woman standing over the hot coals grilling chicken offers to wash a foreigner’s hair in the salon’s sink inside, which sits beside an old-fashioned bowl-like hair dryer. Another woman runs her fingers through the knotted mass and comments on its thickness. A third woman suggests shaving the whole mess off, removing a kerchief from her head, revealing her own lack of hair.

Chouinard, 56, gulps back the cold brew and, when asked about his family, says he is the 11th of 16, and his 90-year-old mom lives in St. Léonard with one daughter and her husband.

“When I call my mom every week, she says, ‘Who is this?’ and I say, ‘Your favourite son.’

“And she says, ‘You’re crazy; I love all my children the same.’ ”

Then it’s back in the four-by-four for a 21⁄2-hour drive that, under normal circumstances, would take 20 minutes. Traffic is blocked in both directions, and some impatient drivers climb over the curb and race along the sidewalk, pedestrians jumping just in time. One vehicle passes from the opposite direction, its roof and doors gone, its body crushed, but somehow it is moving.

Chouinard goes on yet another rant, calling the UN buffoons, delinquent drivers imbeciles, hammering the horn and shoving his car against the one in front of him.

It’s his way, he says.

“Sometimes I cry all night long, and didn’t sleep much at the beginning of this,” he says. “When I close my eyes at night, that’s all I see, are the bodies, the destruction.”

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